Yulia Lipnitskaya, #Sochi ‘s youngest Winter Olympics Champion

Fifteen year old Russian Yulia Lipnitskaya has become the youngest Gold medalist in the history of the Olympic Winter Games.

She is six days younger than US figure skater Tara Lipinski was when Lipinski won a Gold medal in Nagano in 1998.

Lipnitskaya received a standing ovation for her phenomenal performances in the short program and free skate in the figure skating team competition where she modestly told journalists that this was not her best performance.

“For me, this skate was not the best.
We will work on mistakes so that on the individual championship there are no flaws,” she said. “It was annoying that I failed the last rotation,” she confessed. “And, yes, I could strengthen jumps. In the individual tournament, I set the highest goals.”

President Vladimir Putin was in attendance at the Iceberg Skating Palace where the Russians skated away from Canada and the United States to win the Gold before the final free dance even started.

In 2009 Lipnitskaya moved to Moscow with her mother, after training for seven years in her native Yekaterinburg. She made the switch to allow her to continue working with Coach Eteri Tutberidze. Lipnitskaya will now fly back home to Moscow, where she trains, and return to Sochi to compete for gold in the individual event.